Opening Remarks by the Director-General of the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture, Dr Cynthia Khumalo, at the 4th Culture Working Group Meeting, 27 October 2025
Programme Director: Ms Zimasa Velaphi
Honourable Minister Gayton McKenzie
MEC Mntomuhle Khawula
Ms Angela Martins from the African Union
Mr Bruno Melo from Brazil representing the Troika Group
Representatives from UNESCO, our knowledge partner
Distinguished Delegates from G20 Countries, Guest Countries, and International Organizations,
Senior Officials
Members of the Media
Members of the Diplomatic Corps
Ladies and Gentlemen:
We are here today to welcome you to the 4th and final G20 Culture Working Group meeting and to the province of KwaZulu-Natal.
This time we welcome you to KwaDukuza, an ancient place, already inhabited by 400 A.D. Much later it housed an Iron Age Village and in more recent times, more than two hundred years ago, this was where King Shaka began a new royal settlement calling it Dukuza, the place of the lost person, a possible reference to a maze or labyrinth, describing the sophisticated way in which the many huts of the settlement at this royal seat were laid out. It was also his last great capital and close to where he was assassinated at Shaka’s Rock.
Let us be inspired by his legacy as a unifier of people and as a strategist and innovator, whom history remembers well, whose people’s victories inspired countless others to fight for their freedom from colonial rule. The landscape of KwaZulu Natal carries stories of warriors, is etched with battlefields, also illuminates our struggle for freedom and the achievements of our democracy.
Let us too be unifiers and visionaries in our daily lives with culture as an anchor, with cultural belonging in turn providing an identity and embracing cultural upbringing, which enables the safeguarding and transmission of traditions and heritage and languages, allowing for interactions with others
and giving rise to a wise people and a flourishing creative economy, at peace with itself and the world.
As the G20 Culture Working Group you too have come a long way together, and have had intensive discussions from the earliest online meeting in February, to the physical meeting in Johannesburg in May and in the greater Cape Town in July, with intercessional sessions in-between.
In all these fora, there has been one overarching issue and a question that seized your attention; and that is: what is it that G20 countries should be doing together to advance the cultural sphere?
You have spent many months answering this question, proposing new ideas, finding new solutions for new times, and you have done your job well so far, with confidence and tolerance, sharing best practices rigorously and robustly, and negotiating intelligently and intensely your country position and the direction that you wish to take culture in the world.
You have done all this, not for yourselves, but for the greater good of the people of your countries, of our countries, and for the international organisations to which they belong and for the world.
But not content with addressing the needs of the present, you have also looked into the future to address the implications of digital technologies on cultural work and content creation, expanded on the real potential of cultural and creative industries to the economy, emphasised the need to measure this success and, most importantly, you have brought to the fore the needs of local and traditional communities and their right to cultural life.
Together let us continue to share a vision of culture’s role in sustaining development, of cultural knowledge and expressions as worthy of protection, of cultural plurality and diversity as essential for cultivating a more peaceful and a more inclusive world.
When we first met in person, I said that I believe that the Culture Working Group will make further strides in 2025. And I believe that the work, that has been done thus far, has built on the foundations of previous years, and has taken to heart the South African G20 theme of “Solidarity, Equality and Sustainability.”
As you consolidate the last part of your work in the next few days as the G20 Culture Working Group for 2025, let this desire for solidarity, pursuit of equality and practices of sustainability through culture guide you in your work.
I thank you.
